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3232When Are You Ready To Scalehttps://straighttalk.consulting/original/when-are-you-ready-to-scale/
https://straighttalk.consulting/original/when-are-you-ready-to-scale/#respondSat, 25 Apr 2020 23:52:14 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3848Scaling a business is arguably the most exciting time for everyone involved, it is when you see all your hard work begin to deliver tangible results. But, when are you ready to scale?

Finally you have to demonstrate that you can achieve success with more people within a specific niche over time.

So what do I mean by that?

If we stick with our daily use example product, let’s say the first 10 people you acquire in a niche. Three of the 10 use it every day for 30 days.

Then you get some feedback, you adjust the product, you make some changes.

Customers 11 through 20, eight of them use it every day for 30 days.

That is you being able to demonstrate that you’re getting better at serving that market over time.

For some of our clients that we work with, if they’re going to do a seed raise, this is typically when they would do it.

Now we have worked through market fit we can look at learning to scale.

The first step in learning to scale is you have to identify a big enough niche.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that you have to have a niche that can support your growth goals in a reasonable timeframe.

If you’re looking to grow to $1 million in revenue, but the niche you’ve targeted is a $10 million market, that’s going to be very difficult for you to achieve, because you have to have taken over 10% of the total market, which is going to be very difficult.

It will take you a much longer time to do when compared to say a $50 or $100 million market, which should be a lot easier for you to get to those growth figures.

The second step is how can you consistently generate sales qualified leads?

It’s very difficult for you to scale sales, customer success and all the other steps if you don’t have a way to consistently generate leads that are qualified for sales.

That doesn’t mean I get newsletter signups, that means people that have come in, asked for a demo, asked for a consultation, and have been qualified as high enough quality to progress through your sales funnel.

Thats why when I’m looking at this, I tend to stray away from things like conferences and SEO, because they’re very difficult for you to control the flow of leads.

You can’t just turn a tap on and get an extra 10, or an extra 20, or an extra 30 qualified leads.

Which is something you can do with outbound selling, outbound lead generation, paid ads and search engine ads.

There’s nothing wrong with things like conferences, but it’s very difficult to get that consistency if that’s all you’re relying on

Next, you have to be able to show that non-founders can sell.

What will typically happen here is when you bring on your first few sales people, is usually they can do pretty well, and the reason for that is they tend to get a lot of time with the founders and they tend to learn from osmosis.

They will hear you speaking, they’ll see the emails you’re writing, they’ll be in the meetings with you, and they just tend to pick up a lot of what’s needed just by being around you.

The problem tends to come when you start hiring salesperson number three, number four, number five and number six, because what will happen is as the company grows, these employees won’t have that same amount of time with you.

So they’re not going to be able to learn in the same way.

They are reliant on the training material that you created.

It’s quite common for this training material just to not be good enough. And then the performance starts to suffer.

The key here is just to be aware that it’s a fairly typical problem that occurs in many organizations, and you can now spot it, and know how to fix it. Usually it’s a training issue.

Another tip that I would suggest for this stage is if it’s financially possible hire in pairs, but hire for the same role in pairs. Hire two SDRs for example.

That way if they both perform well, you can roughly say, okay, the system’s working.

If they both perform badly then probably the system needs some work.

If one performs well and another performs badly, then it could just be the case that they’re not really suited to the role.

Hiring in pairs lets you know is it with the system, or is it with the individual?

The next steps are to demonstrate your sales process and your customer success process are going to scale in tandem.

So what does this mean?

This means as you start going from processing five leads a month to 10 leads or to 15, there’s going to be adjustments in both of those processes that need to be taken into account.

There has to always be a follow up task for deals in the system.

You have to have set criteria at each stage of the funnel.

These are all things that you have to develop and you have to report on and present, in order for it to be tangible that this sales process can scale, and it’s not just going to start opening up big black holes where deals are going to fall into.

The same goes with customer success.

The real easy way that I go about doing this is following a GPCT structure, which stands for goals, plan, challenges, and timeframe.

For every single lead, and then every single customer, I like to have that listed out.

So what are their goals?

What’s the plan for achieving the goals?

What are the challenges?

What is the timeframe?

This forms a really useful structure because a lot of the clients that we have, they’ll go through POCs, or trials as part of the sales process.

So we will normally say, “Okay, the POC can be deemed as a success if we achieve this one goal.”

It makes it very clear on exactly what success is going to be measured against, and then we have a very clear plan on how we can get achieve it.

The other benefit of this, is you’ll often find most people have multiple goals.

So this structure forms a really useful document for your customer success teams.

Imagine if a company comes to you and they have four goals, and you achieve the first goal as part of a POC you’ve then got a ready made customer success document.

Your customer success team then has to deliver on the other three goals within the contract timeframe.

The good thing about that is it then it gives you, as a business owner or a founder, a monthly meeting, just go set up a monthly meeting and go through those GPCT docs for every single customer you’ve got.

And ask your team, where are we on achieving this?

Where are we on achieving this?

What about this one? What about this one?

Why has it not been achieved? How far away are we?

And what you’ll be able to do very quickly, is start to identify opportunities for upgrades.

You’ll be able to look for renewals, but you’ll also see at-risk clients, and answer why are they at risk?

So this is just again, a really handy way of demonstrating that you’re ready to scale, it’s a process in place that’s going to allow you to do so.

The next step is to deliver all of the steps profitably.

This doesn’t necessarily mean what a lot of people thinks it means. They tend to think it means, I’ve acquired a customer for $100, and they’ve signed $150 contract.

It’s not quite that. It’s a case of understanding all of the metrics.

What’s it costing you to acquire people?

What is the value of each step in the process?

Now what’s the newsletter sign up worth to you?

What’s a demo worth to you?

What’s a consultation worth to you?

What’s the payback period?

So if you acquire someone for a certain price, how long does it take you to get that money back and become profitable on that customer?

What is the churn?

These are all things you have to know because they’re going to let you understand how can you scale profitably.

If it takes you six months to get the money back you spent to acquire someone that’s going to impact the cashflow of how quickly you can scale.

You have to have the information so you can put it into your finances and make decisions based on that.

You also have to know what can’t you know right now, because there are things at early stages, you’re not going to be able to know.

For example, it can be very difficult to say what is your customer lifetime value if you’re just a year old, because you might have people that have been with you since the beginning, and they keep renewing so you don’t know.

You can say, well, the current lifetime value is an average of X, but that’s going up every month.

Or maybe you’re only three months into signing contracts with customers.

So you’re not necessarily going to have all the answers, but that’s okay.

It’s just as important to know why you don’t have that information, and what you’re doing to go about getting it.

That’s what I mean by deliver all steps profitably.

It’s about understanding the numbers.

The final step, which is probably the most important because it’s great to be building all these new things that we’ve been talking about, but just by implementing them, they don’t necessarily let you scale.

What is going to let you scale is by consistently delivering each of the previous steps.

Typically I would say deliver consistently for around six months.

For me, if you do it consistently for six months, that is when you are finally ready to put the foot down and really start to scale growth.

Once you have completed the 6 market fit steps and the 7 learning to scale steps you can move into scaling.

That answers the question when are you ready to scale.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/original/when-are-you-ready-to-scale/feed/0My Simple Paid Ads Strategyhttps://straighttalk.consulting/original/my-simple-paid-ads-strategy/
https://straighttalk.consulting/original/my-simple-paid-ads-strategy/#respondSat, 25 Apr 2020 20:32:04 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3845There is no shortage of Facebook ads or paid ad articles, courses and experts out there. All selling the secret to infinite leads at low cost if you just do this one thing that they can show you.

My Simple Paid Ads Strategy

There is no shortage of Facebook Ads or paid ad articles, courses and experts out there.

All selling the secret to infinite leads, at low cost. If you just do this one thing, that they can show you.

The truth is that here at Straight Talk, we are not Facebook or paid ad guru’s… we are growth experts.

Do we run Facebook Ads? – Yes

Do we generate leads? – Yes

Does this strategy work with brand new accounts? – Yes

Do I have some “secret sauce” solution? – No

What I can share with you is… our simple ads strategy, that we use to:

Generate leads

Build a list

Hone our offering

Begin building a brand

I have also included a video accompanying this article. So you can see the live account.

What Do You Offer

Firstly, you have to decide what you are offering.

In our Straight Talk account we started with three things

1. Join our “Growth Tactics” mailing list.

2. Download our “Learning to Scale” eBook.

3. Book a consultation.

When I am choosing what to offer, I try to think of things that require different levels of commitment i.e. newsletter signups are less commitment than a consultation.

I also look for things that will identify my specific audience i.e. if I were targeting parents, I would specifically mention parents in my ad / make my offering applicable to them.

You can see I am aiming at business owners, looking to scale… with my “Learning to Scale” eBook and “Growth Tactics” offer.

Try to think of 2 – 4 things you could offer, that are related to your company.

Some common examples are:

Mailing list signup

Discount Code

Purchase

Consultation

eBooks

Guides

Creative

Once you have decided on the 2 – 4 offerings, you will need your creative / ad image. I create two images for each of my offerings. I had three offerings, so I had 6 images.

This allows me to split test different images.

I have included 4 of the images below. You may have even seen these images in your own newsfeed.

You will see that you dont have to make crazy changes between designs.

I made each of these in Canva on a 1080 x 1080 canvas.

If you are unsure of how to do this yourself, feel free to email me or send us a message via the website.

I am happy to show you how to create images like this, yourself.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/original/my-simple-paid-ads-strategy/feed/0Been Burnt Hiring For Sales? – How To Find & Hire The Right Candidateshttps://straighttalk.consulting/sales/been-burnt-hiring-for-sales-how-to-find-hire-the-right-candidates/
https://straighttalk.consulting/sales/been-burnt-hiring-for-sales-how-to-find-hire-the-right-candidates/#respondThu, 23 Apr 2020 10:02:09 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3797Hiring for sales roles appears to be the one thing that causes more problems than perhaps any other role within startups. It almost seems a right of passage

Been Burnt Hiring For Sales? – How To Find & Hire The Right Candidates

Hiring for sales roles appears to be the one thing that causes more problems, than perhaps any other role within startups.

It almost seems a right of passage for many founders, to at some point use the phrases “They looked good on paper” or “They were so good at selling themselves.”

All joking aside, the problem is not all bad sales people or sales people tricking us. There are things that you can do to ensure the outcome, that we are looking for.

What’s the Role

Too often startups, when looking to hire a sales person… don’t clearly define the role.

Do you want people to prospect leads?

Do you want closers?

Are you looking for people to manage your existing customers and focus on renewals?

Do you want someone to implement the sales processes and build the machine?

Are you expecting them to work predominantly inbound or outbound leads?

The truth is, that sales has specialist roles and each one of those questions can easily be a different person. If you answered “yes” to more than one of those questions, you likely need multiple hires.

The problem is… that you are a startup and simply going out and hiring multiple people to build a full sales team isn’t financially viable…so what is the solution?

Start at the Beginning

It might seem like an obvious concept, but to get the sales hiring right we have to start at the beginning and decide what we are looking for.

When working with clients, I tend to recommend two simple starter questions:

Are they working inbound or outbound leads?

Will they be prospecting or closing leads?

When getting started, I typically recommend that you look to hire a prospector / qualifier first, as this is the first step in any sales process. The closing can be done by you personally.

(I always reccommend doing the closing yourself, to become dangerous.)

I also recommend you work with the prospector / qualifier to train them personally. Or, if you’re not experienced, work with them to develop the process.

There are multiple benefits to this structure:

Prospectors and qualifiers are the least expensive sales resource.

It allows you to develop “your way” of doing things from day one.

It provides you with experience and education in sales, without a high cost and a low risk.

When you hire a closer, you will have experience in the role. Making it easier to spot a good candidate.

It provides a simple promotion structure, where you may choose to promote your prospector, to closer and hire a new prospector.

You begin developing sales training, without realizing it.

By starting with this structure, it lets you focus initially on the activities that will generate the biggest return – prospecting.

Before moving up the sales hierachy, as your company matures with additional prospectors, closers, sales managers and customer success / renewals, all to follow.

Where to Find People

When it comes to finding sales people to hire there are a few options available to you. Depending on the role there are different places that i will look.

When i am looking for people to hire i typically have one initial criteria that i am looking to fill for every role. Do they have experience in moving a company similar to mine from where i am now to where i want to be.

If the answer is yes they are likely going on my shortlist

For prospectors / qualifiers / SDR’s I will typically use linkedin to find candidates. I use linkedin because its easy to find similar companies then look at how long different people have been in the role.

I will also use my network and the network of my investors where possible.

Personally i am not a big fan of recruitment companies for any of these roles. Thats not to say they cannot do a good job, they are just not my preference.

The reason for this is i am often spear fishing when it comes to initial candidates. I am looking for very specific people and i have found that leveraging linkedin and my personal network works better.

Interview Process

There is no such thing as the perfect interview questions, to get the hiring process right every time. But there are two things that you can do, on top of asking the right questions.

Practical Demonstration – Have the candidate perform a practical demonstration on something they would be expected to do in their day to day work.

Hiring a prospector? Provide them with material to learn before the interview and conduct a trial call. This process can be repeated for every sales hire with appropriate tasks created.

Trial Period – The proof of the pudding is in the eating and all sales people should be on a trial period. They dont necessarily have to set the world alight, but they should show a baseline performance with improvements over time. It will be apparent over a 2 or 3 month period, if they can make the grade.

Final Tip

When hiring a Head of Sales or VP of Sales, it’s important that you remember they should not be your first sales hire and they are not there to do daily sales activities… like prospecting, demo’s or follow up emails.

The VP of Sales is there to guide the overall sales strategy, train the team, report to the CEO and interact with the heads of other business units, to coordinate strategy.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/sales/been-burnt-hiring-for-sales-how-to-find-hire-the-right-candidates/feed/0Should Technical Founders Outsource Lead Generation?https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/should-technical-founders-outsource-lead-generation/
https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/should-technical-founders-outsource-lead-generation/#respondThu, 23 Apr 2020 09:51:40 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3795I was recently lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak at the Baltic Sandbox incubator (via zoom we are in the middle of corona virus lockdown at the time of writing).

Should Technical Founders Outsource Lead Generation?

I was recently lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak at the Baltic Sandbox Incubator (Via Zoom, as we’re in the middle of the Corona virus lockdown, at the time of writing).

I was asked by one of the founders “Can I outsource my lead generation?” – A question I have received multiple times, recently.

With so many people asking the question, I decided to write down my answer.

First Some Context

I think it’s important to firstly provide some context to the question. I work with a lot of technical founders, who are most comfortable building or coding their product.

Marketing, sales and operations are often secondary and are areas where they have little experience.

Being Uncomfortable

First I think we all need to accept that where possible, we will move towards where we are comfortable and in the process avoid the things that make us uncomfortable.

Whilst there is a level of going into the unknow with any business. This phenomenon still exists within entrepreneurs and it is amplified when there is money involved – Especially when there is money to be lost!

There is nothing wrong with this behavior on its own, its part of our built in survival mechanism. We just need to be aware of it and aware of when we are acting in this way.

Be Dangerous

It is also important that I share a concept with you that I speak about regularly, which is being dangerous.

If you are a founder or senior person at a startup… you have to “Be Dangrous.”

When I say this, I mean you have to know enough about every aspect of the business, in order to make you dangerous:

You do not have to be the person making the sales call, but you have to know the scripts.

You do not have to be the person managing the CRM, but you have to know how it works.

You do not have to be the person managing the Facebook Ads, but you have to know the strategy.

I think this is perhaps one of the most important lessons to learn. Because, if you are not dangerous you leave yourself open to being taken advantage of, or making bad decisions through ignorance.

Two things you do not want to happen….

So Should I Outsource?

To answer the question, we need to take into account everything we have discussed previously.

Outsourcing your lead generation can be an excellent way to deliver results and take some pressure off of you so long as:

You know exactly what the scope of work is and why its being done

You have visibility into exactly what they are doing

They are a reputable company with testimonials you can validate

They have experience and have been successful with companies, in the same position you are in

You know enough about the work to “be dangerous”

Your initial contract is no longer than 3-6 months in duration

You have a long term plan to bring the work in house

You know exactly what you are getting, to avoid hidden costs

You can commit to paying them for at least 12 months, should they deliver results

You should not be outsourcing lead generation if:

You are using it as a way to avoid learning and becoming dangerous

It is an uncomfortable area of the business for you, so you avoid it

You will be reliant on the contractor, for an indefinite period of time

They do not have experience working with companies in your position

You are unclear on the exact work they are doing and how this is working for your business

Takeaways

The answer to the question… as you can see is, that it really depends on you, what stage your company is at and why you are looking to outsource the work.

It’s true that becoming dangerous can mean progress is slower right now, but it pays dividends in the future.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/should-technical-founders-outsource-lead-generation/feed/0Have You Achieved Market Fit – The 6 Steps You Must Complete Before You Can Say Yeshttps://straighttalk.consulting/product-analysis/have-you-achieved-market-fit-the-6-steps-you-must-complete-before-you-can-say-yes/
https://straighttalk.consulting/product-analysis/have-you-achieved-market-fit-the-6-steps-you-must-complete-before-you-can-say-yes/#respondThu, 23 Apr 2020 09:50:16 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3794Achieving product market fit is a stage of the business lifecycle that all software and product based businesses must go through.

Have You Achieved Market Fit – The 6 Steps You Must Complete Before You Can Say Yes

Achieving Product Market Fit, is a stage of the business lifecycle that all software and product based businesses must go through. With thousands of books, blog posts and videos on the subject of “How to get there.”

If Product Market Fit is a destination for us to arrive at, the biggest challenge for startups is “How do you know when you get there?”

Once you have achieved Market Fit, what do you do next?

We’ll answer those two questions, in this post.

6 Stages You Must Complete

There are 6 stages that we judge a startup against, when deciding if they have achieved Product Market Fit.

These are:

Identified a problem you solve

Defined a niche / market to target

Have demonstrated you solve the problem and the niche / market will pay you to do so

Define a success metric

Prove you can sell the product via founder lead sales

Demonstrated you get better at serving the niche / market over time.

Identify A Problem You Solve

The first step is pretty straight forward – You have to identify a problem you solve.

There are many products that will solve multiple problems and thats a good thing.

However, focus on just one for now. Once you have been through this entire process once you can repeat it for each problem you solve for your customers.

Define A Niche / Market To Target

Once we know the problem we solve we must identify the niche / market with that problem.

As with step one there can be multiple niche’s that have the same problem but start with a single niche, get the process right then repeat as necessary.

Trying to work through this process solving every problem and targeting every niche at once will just make things more confusing and increase the time it takes to acheive market fit.

Another tip when defining your niche is be as specific as possible for example – Accounts is not acceptable.

Accountants with 30 -50 members of staff, based in the USA and have specialist tax return services is acceptable.

Demonstrate You Solve The Problem & The Market Will Pay You To Fix It

Demonstrating that you solve the problem and the market will pay can be a tricky one. It can even take multiple iterations or pivots to get this right.

Just because you have identified a problem and you can solve it doesnt mean the market will pay you to do so.

You have to be constantly listening to feedback from your target market, analysing their input and adjusting the product as necessary.

Define A Success Metric

A success metric or a “aha moment” as its known by most people is usually defined as the moment when people are successful or gain value from your product.

The reason most people get this step wrong is they use churn as their guide for success. Churn is a lagging indicator and that is what causes the problems.

For most companies using churn where they have longer contracts i.e. 12 months they have to wait a whole year before finding out the churn rate.

The problem with this is you could have a terrible churn rate and you would know nothing about it for a whole year.

That wasted time and money often results in companies walking off a cliff edge before they even realise it. They often never make it through year two.

Churn can work as a success metric where you have shorter or rolling contracts. However, even if that is the case we would recommend creating a success metric based on action taken.

The way we like to create success metrics is to look at how your product should be used.

A simple example is imagine your product is designed to be used daily. We would suggest you track the number of customers who used your product daily for 30 days.

If that number is increasing you know you are adding value.

Prove You Can Sell The Product

This initial step of selling your product can often be defined as founder lead selling. Typically this step will be done almost exclusively by the founders.

For most startups this will be no more than 10 – 20 customers. These initial customers often come through referrals, your network or direct relationships of some sort.

The main requirement of this stage is to:

Learn what you customers want / need

Be exposed to the sales process

Begin to understand what is needed in order to sell your product

Understand the timeframes of a sales cycle

Get Better At Serving The Niche / Market

This final step is exactly what it sounds like. You must get better at adding value to your chosen niche / market over time. The easiest way to demonstrate that is with your success metric.

If we carry on with our example daily use product lets imagine of your first 10 customers 3 of them use it every day for 30 days.

Whereas, customers 11-20, 6 of them use it every day for the first 30 days.

That is showing a clear improvement in value added to your chosen niche.

You can also demonstrate increase value over time through cohort analysis and tracking how long it takes each cohort to achieve the success metric.

You Have Market Fit What Next?

Once you have achieved product market fit two things typically happen with our clients.

1. They look to raise their seed round

Not all companies need to raise a seed so it may not be applicable to you. However, the second step is applicable to everyone

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/product-analysis/have-you-achieved-market-fit-the-6-steps-you-must-complete-before-you-can-say-yes/feed/0Content Funnelhttps://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/content-funnel/
https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/content-funnel/#respondTue, 10 Mar 2020 00:04:41 +0000https://straighttalk.consulting/?p=3395In this article, we are going to show you why you need no more than 5-7 pieces of content for each persona.Read more to see what those pieces of content are.

Content Funnel

How do you increase traffic and get your first conversions, if you are just getting started?

That is a great question and with all of the different tactics out there, how do you know which one is right for you and which ones are wrong for you?

I am not going to tell you that any other tactics are wrong for you, because it depends on the position of your business. What I can share, is a simple strategy that we use to drive traffic and conversions, when starting from absolutely nothing.

Not for Ecommerce

Before we continue, I want to be clear… that this IS NOT a tactic that we use for Ecommerce businesses. We use this for companies or startups that want to build their mailing list, build their brand or simply begin building their sales pipeline.

Define your Audience and Their Problem:

The first step, is to define your audience and a single problem they have. It’s possible your audience will have multiple problems that you can solve, but to get started… choose just one.

If you are unsure of which problem to choose, look at which problem you can provide the most value in fixing. Which problem, if you solved it… would have the biggest impact on your audience?

Break the Problem into Individual Pieces

Now that you have settled on an audience and a single problem, it is time to break that problem out into individual pieces.

These pieces should form a step by step process, to solving the problem and implementing the solution.

Imagine the problem was “How do I build an outbound sales process?” You would break this process down into its individual steps, that might look something like this:

Identify your audience

Create audience messaging

Identify list of 200 target accounts

Build your sequences

Add A/B testing into sequences

Define technology stack

What reporting is necessary

Internal review schedule

Creating Content Every Step of the Way:

At this point, you should have your audience, a problem and the steps needed to solve the problem. Now it’s time to create content for each step of the solution.

I like to use written word; video and podcast etc. are all great, but they require more effort to do them well. Whilst you may not get as high engagement with a blog post when compared to a video. What I have found is, that people will come back to finish reading the blog post if you provide value.

If you just have a video in someone’s social media feed, it can easily be lost forever.

Creating content in this way, creates a natural progression that people can follow along with. Hence, the “Content Funnel”.

Once people get to the end of this funnel, they are ready to engage with a “bigger ask.” The mistake most people make is they ask for an email, consultation, phone call or some other “big ask,” the first time they interact with someone.

Try to think about how you behave when encountering a new product or service. The chances are you have multiple touch points, before you finally engage. First engagements are often quite small, such as subscribing for blog updates.

End of the Road:

The final piece of the puzzle, is to create your “big ask.” Some common examples are:

Ebooks

Guides

Consultation

Phone Call

The “big ask” should be associated to your content funnel. If we were creating content on “How to build an outbound sales process” we would likely have “The complete guide to outbound sales” as our “big ask giveaway” in exchange for a name and an email.

We would make this guide available on every blog post that is associated with your funnel, as well as providing a specific landing page, where the guide can be downloaded.

Put it into Action:

Now that we have all of the pieces, we can put everything into action. Pick your platform of choice: Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, being popular ones and show your first piece of content to your target audience for $5 or $10 per day.

You can use a higher budget, if you have it available.

Retarget everyone who visits post 1 with post 2. Then repeat and move people through the funnel. Remove them from retargeting once they signup for the “big ask.”

This structure is a way for you to create multiple touch points with your target audience and generate leads, all at a low cost.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/content-funnel/feed/0Consulting Plus Products in SaaShttps://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/consulting-plus-product-in-saas/
https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/consulting-plus-product-in-saas/#respondWed, 04 Dec 2019 00:46:02 +0000https://straighttalkco.wpengine.com/?p=2656I get asked alot of questions about scaling SAAS. It seems there's a lot that people are unsure of. This video goes over my recommendations & why I think so many people struggle with it.

Consulting Plus Products in SaaS

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/consulting-plus-product-in-saas/feed/0Don’t Make Stupid Projections!https://straighttalk.consulting/business-tips/dont-make-stupid-projections/
https://straighttalk.consulting/business-tips/dont-make-stupid-projections/#respondWed, 04 Dec 2019 00:39:34 +0000https://straighttalkco.wpengine.com/?p=2651Don't make the common mistakes that most people make when looking for investments. I will go over those mistakes & show you the correct way to get that investment you're looking for.

Don’t Make Stupid Projections!

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/business-tips/dont-make-stupid-projections/feed/0Facebook Ads Quick Tipshttps://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/facebook-ads-quick-tips/
https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/facebook-ads-quick-tips/#respondWed, 04 Dec 2019 00:31:44 +0000https://straighttalkco.wpengine.com/?p=2640Do you have questions about Facebook Audience Network & Facebook Advertising? Do you have questions on where to put your ads? I'll give you some quick & effective tips that will point you in the right direction in this video.

Facebook Ads Quick Tips

In this post, I am going to share two simple but effective tips for Facebook Advertising.

Retargeting Video Views

The first tip is for people looking to retarget, based on video views. The ability to retarget, based on people who watched 25%, 50%, 75%, 95% and 100% of your video, is now a well tried and tested part of the Facebook Ads platform.

However, something you may not be aware of, is the fact that people who engage with your video via the Audience Network, cannot be retargeted. That means, anyone who watched 75% of your video via the Audience Network, is essentially lost. You cannot retarget them or re-engage with them, based on that video view.

This is obviously problematic, if you’re using videos to move people through a funnel.

In addition, we have found that when all locations are selected for Ad Placement, Facebook tends to acquire a lot of video views from the Audience Network. Wasting even more of your budget, if your plan is to remarket.

Thankfully, this is an easy problem to solve. Whenever you are creating Video Ads and you’re planning to remarket them based on the % viewed, uncheck the Audience Network from the Ad Placement options.

Buy Now Targeting

The second tip is specific to ecommerce businesses. Within the detailed targeting section of the Ad Sets, there is a targeting option called “Engaged Shoppers.” This group of people includes anyone that have clicked the “Buy Now” call to action button, in the last week.

When you are setting up your targeting for your Facebook Ad, go into Detailed Targeting, type in “Engaged Shoppers” and you’ll see it.

If you are selling e-commerce products or simply selling online, combining these people with specific interests related to your business will provide you with an audience, far more likely to click that “Buy Now” button.

This is a great tactic to implement for cold audiences.

As an example, lets say you wanted to target people that like dogs, because you offer dog food tailored to specific breeds nutritional requirements. You might target people that like dogs AND are engaged shoppers, as your cold audience.

Conclusion

Give these tips a go and let us know how they work for you.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth

]]>https://straighttalk.consulting/lead-generation-and-conversion/facebook-ads-quick-tips/feed/0Are You Hiring a Sales Rep or Head of Sales?https://straighttalk.consulting/sales/are-you-hiring-a-sales-rep-or-head-of-sales/
https://straighttalk.consulting/sales/are-you-hiring-a-sales-rep-or-head-of-sales/#respondTue, 03 Dec 2019 23:55:50 +0000https://straighttalkco.wpengine.com/?p=2628Are you hiring the right person for the job? Are you even sure of what that job entails? When looking to hire a Sales Rep or a Head of Sales, don't make the mistake that most make. Watch this video to see what those mistakes are. You'll be shocked.

Are You Hiring a Sales Rep or Head of Sales?

One of the first “big hires” at many startups is, the “Head of Sales” or “VP of Sales.” It is also the hire, that many people seem to get wrong.

There are a number of common mistakes that I see made, when people are hiring for this role. We will go through those mistakes in this post.

Hiring a Sales Rep or VP of Sales

The first and most common mistake, that we see being made is confusion between a Sales Rep / Closer /VP of Sales.

When startups want to transition out of “founder lead sales” and develop a more mature sales process, we often see the first sales hire being made.

It is not uncommon for founders, to want someone who can recommend the right tools (for their current position), build the process, write the scripts, send the emails, make the calls and create the sales material.

There is nothing wrong with that expectation. Its entirely necessary, within a startup. What you need to be aware of is, that your typical SDR, Closer or VP of Sales, will not be able to do all of those things.

The VP of Sales, is often the worst person to employ at this point. Because anyone with experience in that role, will have spent large amounts of time supporting a sales team, hiring, training, reporting and interacting with the wider business.

These are not skills that are critical at “early stage” companies.

You need someone who is capable of building the basic sales process. But most importantly, can do the daily work required of sales teams.

Do not fall into the trap of hiring a VP of Sales, then becoming dissapointed when they do not deliver on what you expected. That is not and never was, their speciality.

Great Experience – Wrong Company

The second mistake that we see being made is, the hiring of people with great experience, at the wrong places. What does that mean?

It means that you are hiring people to move your business from its current position to a more desirable position. That is a process that will happen continually.

The mistake that people make here is, they hire people that have a great resume or great experience, working in fantastic companies. But that doesn’t mean they have ever taken a company in your position, to the desired position.

So whilst they can look great on paper with great experience, it might be at the wrong company.

When hiring someone, look for people with experience transitioning from the position you are in, to where you want to be. Not just experience in the role.

There Might Not be a Right Time

When it comes to hiring VP’s specifically, there might not ever be a right time. Thats because you never know when good people will be available.

There is a small caveat to this rule, which is – You shouldn’t be looking to hire any VP, until you have achieved at least $1 million in revenue.

Once that milestone has been passed, sometimes you just have to take the right VP, at the wrong time. The good people are in high demand and they may become available at a time that isn’t perfect for you.

Most of the time, its better to take them, than pass up on the opportunity and hope they are available when you really need them.

So long as the financials work, you are going to build the best team this way.

Yes its true, from time to time it might mean changing your strategy slightly. But the long term benefits are worth it.

By Dan Wheatley, Co-Founder

CEO/Co-Founder of Straight Talk Consulting, a business consultancy that gets our hands dirty. We work with organisations to achieve product market fit before transitioning into scalable and repeatable growth